A West Covina man who allegedly ran a Ponzi scheme that stole nearly $700,000 from investors has pleaded guilty to federal mail fraud charges, authorities said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Miguel Salazar, 36, entered his plea Tuesday in federal court in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
He and his former partner, Carlos Flores, 43, persuaded potential speculators to invest in their company, SF Capital, by telling them the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the spread of infectious diseases globally had caused investments in latex gloves to soar, prosecutors said. SF Capital purchased accounts receivables from latex glove companies, the men said.<\/p>\n
About 30 people invested more than $1.3 million in SF Capital from 2002 to 2006, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
The company, which had mail drops in Alhambra and Glendale, promised a 5% quarterly return on investments. In reality, investors were paid their "interest" by funds siphoned from newer participants’ investment dollars, Assistant U.S. Atty. Angela J. Davis said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
FBI and the U.S. Postal Service investigators learned about the operation after investors complained to the California Department of Corporations that they were having difficulty retrieving their money from the company, Davis said. <\/p>\n
Salazar is scheduled to be sentenced May 3. Flores, who pleaded guilty in December to mail fraud, is to be sentenced Feb. 22. Both men face maximum sentences of 20 years in federal prison.<\/p>\n
"The case is really a lesson for all of us," Davis said. "It’s much, much smaller than the Madoff case and other more famous, widespread and financially injurious Ponzi schemes. But it is a lesson to the rest of us that if something sounds to be too good to be true, it probably is."<\/p>\n
— Amina Khan <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A West Covina man who allegedly ran a Ponzi scheme that stole nearly $700,000 from investors has pleaded guilty to federal mail fraud charges, authorities said Wednesday. Miguel Salazar, 36, entered his plea Tuesday in federal court in Los Angeles. He and his former partner, Carlos Flores, 43, persuaded potential speculators to invest in their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}